In a Press Release for the announcement for the new CHC services which will be flowen by the A345 it said "New Zealand is an increasingly popular destination for leisure travellers from Europe and the Middle East". It said in today's newspaper that EK plans on making New Zealand one of its hubs, but it does not say which airport. It says that EK is planning Direct flights to the Middle East from New Zealand and EK is also considering direct flights beyond the Middle East, like to America etc

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I have a friend working in Line Maintenanace on the AKL ramp, and he said that on average the 3 daily EK flights are about 25-30% full. I guess it is better to make a little money from the cargo rather than sit on the ground in Oz for so long.

I can't find the news link on the web-site, so I'm hoping that it will be in tomorrows Airliners.net newsletter then I can provide the link. Here is some sentences from the news paper. "The airline is happy with a 60% load on nearly all its flights across the Tasman. Emirates extracted higher profits from from less-filled planes by getting high utilisation out of its top model aircraft and from its Staff. The Cargo account for 20% of it Tasman flight profits. The airline plans to fly from New Zealand to the west coast of the USA".

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Introduction of direct Christchurch service has been delayed from its original start up date of June 10 to July, presumably because of late delivery of A345 equipment needed for the route. DXB-MEL-CHC will be launched on July 01, initially operating thrice weekly, but later expanding to a six times weekly operation.

In a Press Release for the announcement for the new CHC services which will be flowen by the A345 it said "New Zealand is an increasingly popular destination for leisure travellers from Europe and the Middle East".

There might be an increase in tourism, but is that enough? Tourism does not fill planes on a daily basis... planes are mixed of tourists, expatriates, businessman... I really doubt that this is a good strategy... as it has been said, loadfactors don't seem great

"The earth provides enough resources for everyone's need, but not for some people's greed." (Gandhi)

Would SYD not be a better hub? Nothing against Auckland... but I thought SYD would attract a lot more traffic.
Would Air NZ be able to fly out of DXB to Europe in return? Eg AKL-DXB-LHR?
And how are AKL's facilities going to cope with even more traffic? Any plans for a terminal expansion? The terminal is way too small during the rush hour, when all the Asian flights come in.

Yes the terminal at AKL is to be expanded. They have constructed a number of remote gates which will eventually house airbridges connected to a 2nd pier. The latest plan I saw included 12 new gates with 4 of them A380 capable. Try having a look at the following site for more info.

i've heard from some australian aviation magzines that EK is studying the feassibality to fly not only from AKL to the east of East coast of US, but also possible destinations in Latin America and pacific islands incl. NAD.

Just 36 pax on their Mel-Akl B777-300 tomorrow, Tuesday 4 May! They do however on average carry between 90 & 160 pax regularly on this sector! Not enough to make it pay one would have thought? Qantas carry the most pax on this route I understand, with their flights full virtually every day!

Trans-Tasman for EK is obviously only part of a bigger picture.
Presumably, they hope to curb any potential losses on those routes with their planned extensions to the US and possibly South America as well as the Pacific Islands.
Their intensions are obviously to be a Round-the World carrier.

Working at DXB airport I can safely say that the neither the joining or the transfer loads from DXB to AKL are anything to talk about. However as VH-BZF said the loads on the Trans-Tasman sector hovers around 100. That is definitely better than having the aircraft on ground in SYD or MEL or BNE. Also, our latest Annual Report mentions that the break-even load has dropped from 65.4 to 59.0. I'm sure financially it makes more sense to keep the asset running and in the air than idle on the ground.

This thread is such a joke. It's a classic kiwi delusions-of-grandeur post, much like what landed Air NZ in all that trouble in the first place. Auckland is a beautiful city and NZ is a beautiful country but exactly what are they going to hub to? There is nothing but ocean forever to the right with a few island nations and Australia to the left. Even much bigger cities like Sydney and Melbourne are end of the line destinations, and we don't pretend to be anything else. People come down under to this part of the world because they want to see Australia and New Zealand, not because it stands at the great crossroads of air-travel. Emirates is using spare capacity and utilising their aircraft to try and earn a bit more rather than letting them sit idle. That's it. There's no grand plan to turn Auckland into a Heathrow of the south, for goodness sake!
It's unfortunate that their loads are so low, because Qantas and Air NZ have just launched yet ANOTHER appeal to merge with one of their main argumants being now that Pacific blue and Emirates are in the trans tasman market, suddenly, we have 'competition', hence the renewed merger plans. I can't think of a worse partner for Qantas, and I hope it never goes ahead. Leave the airline to middle earth alone!

SFO-AKL on EK would be great! RTW would be possible, with a SFO-DXB-AKL-SFO routing. I hope that there is room for both NZ and EK though, it would be a pity to see such a great carrier such as NZ go the way of the buffalo.

Emirates desire to expand and use Auckland as a hub into the South Pacific and on to the USA widely reported here in the media.

Also cited as a reason to support the case for the NZ/QF alliance.

Do you read the papers?
Or is the fact that they may want to hub here and not over there the sort of thing your Aussie newspapers would prefer to shy away from?

NZ767, if you read my post carefully, my point is that neither NZ or Aus cities are ever going to be significant international hubs because of where we live-in a vast and sparsely populated region of the world where airlines fly to, but turn around and head back rather than build large regional operations. Emirates may have reasons for operating AND CURRENT: Austin - Bergstrom International (AFB) (AUS / KBSM), USA - Texas">AUS to Auckland flights, but it is hard to see how they would ever make money building a hib out of Auckland or even Sydney beyond to the US or the Pacific islands for that matter. And even if they DID get the rights to fly AKL to LAX, for example, the NZ market alone would not be able to sustain a new carrier like Emirates AND ANZ. What about Australian traffic? Well, they would have one stops to the US from Australia which would have to compete with already very high frequency non-stops from Melbourne and Sydney to the US offered by Qantas and UA.
The very fact that only NZ papers have reported this bit of 'news' further proves the parochialism and kiwi nature of this original thread.